Platform Engineering refers to the type of process of developing an efficient ecosystem for the software developers which helps them to perform end-to-end operations for the life cycle of software development. The main objective of Platform engineering is to reduce the developers’ overall cognitive load and remove the bottlenecks in the processes.
These types of engineering tools are used to seek to make the developer’s team’s lives easier with less load. Therefore, in this article, a detailed overview has been provided about the Platform engineering and platform engineering tools and the features of these mentioned tools.
What is Platform Engineering?
Platform Engineering refers to the process of enabling the software engineering teams with all the required resources so that they can perform their end-to-end operations of the life cycle of that particular application. The Platform Engineers mainly create an integrated environment that provides the self-service capabilities to the software developers. Therefore, Platform Engineering is not just necessary tooling but is a combination of multiple tools, processes, and workflow which further helps in easing the process of end-to-end operation.
Top 10 Platform Engineering Tools You Should Consider in 2024
There are multiple Platform engineering tools that are used by the software developers but some of them are easy to integrate seamlessly into the workflow and also improve the processes which are mainly used by most developers and companies. Therefore Top 10 Platform Engineering tools in 2024 are mentioned below:
1. Kubernetes
Kubernetes is one of the most famous open source container orchestration platforms which provides the containers the agility and the application lifecycle management that they require. Kubernetes is a type of household name for the software developers teams due to its use cases through the documentation and great community support. Kubernetes platform allows the teams to customize the CI/CD pipeline to match the needs of the developers.
Features
- Kubernetes platform helps in automating the container, its configuration, scaling, networking, and security.
- This platform helps the software developers to package the container cluster for similar deployment on different machines.
- It also allows the developers to deploy the containers automatically across the compute nodes on the VMs,
2. gitStream
gitStream is one of the famous Platform engineering tools which optimizes the PR review process and also improves the frequency of the merge thus it helps to develop custom rules to classify each pull request and then automatically route it down to a unique path. Therefore it results in faster code merges and software delivery in an effective manner.
Features
- gitStream platform helps in automatically assigning the correct reviewer and the number of reviewers to the PRs.
- It also helps in checking the service deprecation and automating the PRmerges and approval.
- This platform also helps in adding context tags to each PR and estimating the time to review.
3. GitLab
GitLab is a type of web-based Git repository manager that is mainly used in supporting the process of development from the planning to the source code management to the testing, maintenance and deployment. GitLab is one of the best packages for improving the infrastructure and it also helps the teams in every stage of development while reducing the cognitive loads.
Features
- GitLab enables detailed code review and manages the CI/CD pipeline in a single interface.
- It also supports the automation of the infrastructure as the code, container orchestration, and configuration management.
- GitLab helps in testing and scanning the vulnerabilities with static application security testing(SAST).
4. Harness
Harness is another Platform engineering tool that is mainly focused on software delivery platforms by leveraging the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Harness platform integrates with the existing tech stack and its orchestration capabilities which helps in managing the stack. The platform also ensures efficient and optimal deployment processes and secure development.
Features
- Harness mainly focuses on the security of the platform and it also offers role-based access control functionality.
- Built-in secret management, authentication essentials, and built-in secret management are some of its main features.
- This platform includes various modules like the CI/ CD tools, cost management, and security testing orchestration.
5. Ansible
Ansible is an application development, cloud provisioning, and configuration management tool that helps in changing the configuration files, configuring the run time environments, and setting up the security configuration to install or update the software. This platform allows the automation of the entire workflow.
Features
- Ansible deploys multi-tier applications reliably without even having to write the custom code.
- Ansible uses and runs the playbook and also communicates with the remote host via SSH.
- The playbook available in Ansible uses other components including the cloud platform, network devices, and so on.
6. Terraform
Terraform is a type of standard IaC tool that is mainly used for managing the infrastructure by including the networks, servers, storage buckets, servers, and database instances. Terraform allows the software developers to develop, update, and delete the infrastructure resources which includes the whole Kubernetes clusters and database instances.
Features
- Terraform helps to enable and manage the infrastructure across multiple platforms as it is vendor-neutral.
- It automates the security based on the enforced policy as the code.
- This platform also integrates with AWS, OpenStack, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.
7. Doppler
Doppler is another platform engineering tool used for the deployed applications. By using the web UI dashboard it is very easy to complete the secret management tasks like removing and updating the secrets in any of the environments. Doppler also automates the process of retrieving and storing the secrets.
Features
- Doppler offers an alternative manual secret handling with the other management tools.
- It also provides a centralized platform for managing the secret and sensitive data.
- This platform also removes the hassle of .env files and the security risks of hard coding them in the apps.
8. Argo CD
Argo CD is a type of Kubernetes native CD tool and is set up inside the Kubernetes clusters by allowing them to deploy the code which changes directly to the Kubernetes resources. It also supports the multiple templates for creating Kubernetes manifests including the YAML files and Helm charts. The platform also allows to define and automate the K8 containers to suit the team’s needs.
Features
- Argo Workflows orchestrate parallel jobs in Kubernetes.
- Argo rollouts in Argo CD offer deployment capabilities which include the canary analysis, experimentation, and so on.
- Argo Events of the Argo CD also allows the developers to trigger the serverless workloads.
9. Drone
Drone is a type of CI platform which is used for creating and testing automation. This is a container native tool that uses a simple YAML-based configuration to define and execute the build pipelines inside the docker containers. It also helps in automating the CI pipelines in all languages and tech stacks.
Features
- Drone helps in writing the plugins in any of the programming languages.
- It also integrates with Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab and also provides an option to write its own Drone plugin.
- Drone works with any of the languages, services, or databases which is running inside the docker.
10. AWS CodePipeline
AWS CodePipeline is a type of CD service that automates the release pipelines and also allows the software developers to update the infrastructure and application easily and quickly. It is also used to automatically build, test, and launch the application every time developers change the code. This makes it easier to manage and monitor the pipelines.
Features
- AWS code pipeline accelerates the workflow with parallel execution.
- This platform also provides a high level of visibility and control over the development processes.
- AWS also enables the developers to see their pipelines in real-time status and details about any of the alerts and notifications.
Conclusion
Platform engineering tools have a major role in the IT industry. These platform engineering tools help in improving the software developers’ experience and they also help the software developers to get the job done by removing the bottlenecks and reducing the friction which the developer’s teams have in day-to-day life. Therefore, in this article, the Top 10 Platform Engineering tools are mentioned with their features which are mainly used by the software developer’s teams.
FAQs
What do you mean by Platform Engineering?
Platform Engineering is a type of practice which is built up from the DevOps principle which seeks to improve in every development team’s costs, security, compliance and time to time business value which further improves the developer’s experience.
What is the use of Platform Engineering tools?
The main use of Platform Engineering tools are that these tools help in enabling the software engineering teams with all the necessary resources so they can autonomously perform end to end operations of the life cycle of applications.
Name some of the best Platform Engineering tools.
Some of the best Platform engineering tools which are used by the software developers to improve its efficiency are- Harness, Ansible, Terraform, Doppler, Argo CD, Drone, AWS CodePipeline, gitStream, GitLab and Kubernetes.
